There are moments in a speakers career when it is not all about the money. What if the client is short of money? One day I was negotiating my fee with the Illinois Hog Growers Association for a convention speech and the chairperson said they had just so many dollars to pay a speaker and my fee was a few hundred dollars more than he had. I asked him if they had many hogs in Illinois. He started telling me about all of the hogs they had in Illinois and he really sold me on the idea that they had hogs. Then I said “Well I guess you might could get one of the members to turn a hog into hams and bacon and whatever I could use on my table, say about enough to cover what they didn’t have in cash and he laughed and agreed that he would really fix me up with pork roasts and such. That night after my talk I drove back to Michigan with a trunk stuffed with Illinois’ finest pork products. Enough to feed not just my family but the families of several friends too. For a while then we were all living high on the hog.
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